Happy Friday friends! I had a great time seeing Bernie yesterday and will put some of my video of the rally in the comments. My phone died shortly after I arrived so I was not able to get many pics/video on it for twitter, etc, and then my camcorder was also giving me issues so I couldn’t get clips longer than about 5-6 minutes so many speakers are divided into multiple parts… but I think I managed to get about 95% of things. The crowd was pretty evenly split between young and old, male and female of multiple races/ethnicities. Local politicians were working the line, OurRevolution and other groups were seeking membership, merchandise was being sold and there wasn’t a negative vibe in the air.

The Vermont senator and former Democratic presidential candidate told Texans that if they are unhappy with the way the government is being run, they should do something about it.

“Texas: Are you ready for a political revolution?” Sanders asked nearly 2,000 people gathered at the Verizon Theater. “We are at a pivotal moment in American history.”

That is why the 75-year-old politician has joined Democratic leaders on a multi-state “Come Together and Fight Back” tour geared to unite Democrats in opposition to Republican President Donald Trump and encourage people to run for office and become politically active. He didn’t keep most of North Texas from sticking with Republicans last year, but now he’s looking to the future.

Texas, a longtime red state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office in more than two decades, was the latest stop on this tour geared to rev up Democrats not just for the 2020 presidential election, but the 2018 mid-terms as well.

“It’s about you,” Sanders told the crowd during a high-energy, nearly two-hour event. “We can transform this country. We can do extraordinary things in this country.”

Bernie Sanders, who attracted millions of college-aged and young adults to his presidential campaign last year, is following through on a promise he made when he left the race: to promote younger leaders for the Democratic Party.

It may not seem the most likely role for the slightly stooped, white-haired, 75-year-old Vermont senator. But Sanders rallied support Thursday for Omaha’s Democratic mayoral candidate Heath Mello, who’s half his age.

While the Democratic Party searches for a path back to power around the country, Sanders is using his popularity to draw thousands to events to promote next-generation Democrats, though his effectiveness so far is unclear. He’s on an eight-state circuit of rallies with Democratic National Committee leaders, visiting states Donald Trump carried in the November election.

“All over this country now, we’re seeing young people inspired to run,” Sanders told The Associated Press after headlining a rally of more than 3,000 in Omaha Thursday. “What all of this is about at the end of the day is the belief that, in order to preserve our democracy, we have to bring millions of people, in one form or another, into the political process.”

The 17 candidates Sanders’ political action committee has endorsed this year, including Mello, generally reflect Sanders’ call for newer faces in a variety of political positions and have a direct connection to urban concerns or social justice causes. Most are in their 30s or 40s.

D﻿emocratic socialists have advised presidents and cabinet members; they have been elected as members of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, and as as state legislators, judges, sheriffs and school board members. But their primary service has been at the municipal level, as mayors and city council members—leading not just big cities such as Milwaukee but mid-sized cities like Reading, Pennsylvania, and small towns like Girard, Kansas.

﻿ So it is worth noting that, at a moment when democratic socialism is experiencing a surge of interest and enthusiasm nationwide, some of the first electoral victories are coming in small and medium-sized cities. The 2016 presidential campaign mounted by Bernie Sanders—who first came to prominence in the early 1980s as the democratic socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont—opened up the constrained American discourse and got millions of Americans thinking anew about an ideology that was deeply rooted in American history. Sanders struck a chord, especially with young working class activists, when he declared: “Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy. Democratic socialism means that we must reform a political system in America today which is not only grossly unfair but, in many respects, corrupt.”

Since the 2016 race finished, Democratic Socialists of America—the group forged over many decades by Michael Harrington, Barbara Ehrenreich, Dolores Huerta, Frances Fox Piven, Gloria Steinem, Cornel West and others to give voice to American democratic socialist vision—has experienced rapid growth in states across the country. And now DSA members are campaigning for and winning local races in states like Georgia and Illinois.

Problem with the video that goes along with it has reporting that Mello supported legislation that required an ultrasound before getting an abortion. That’s not true, but the Daily Kos spread some false information that was picked up by the cable networks.

DK’ers triggered into massive outrage by something negative being said about Bernie that wasn’t quite true? Shocking.

Yes, lots of false info out there that seems designed to make Bernie look like someone who doesn’t care about women’s rights. Judging by what I see on Twitter, lots of Hillbots swallowed it whole in one gulp & then barfed it back up in barely coherent rage.

On Thursday, Mello told The Huffington Post, however, that he “would never do anything to restrict access to reproductive health care,” if elected. Jane Kleeb, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and board member of Our Revolution, a group that emerged out of the embers of the Sanders campaign, said in an interview that The Wall Street Journal and NARAL had “mischaracterized” Mello’s legislative record.

Sensing the possibility of a breakthrough moment on the road back from a disastrous November, Democrats rallied here Thursday to boost Omaha mayoral candidate Heath Mello and proclaim their party’s commitment to working people and Americans of all colors.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, perhaps the party’s dominant national figure after chasing Hillary Clinton to the wire in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, headlined the event.

“It’s time to change one-party rule in Nebraska,” Sanders said, adding that one way to start to do that is to turn the national Democratic Party into a 50-state party that does not focus only on traditionally Democratic states.

“It’s a pivotal moment in American history,” he said, when Republican leadership in Washington is attempting to take 24 million people off health insurance while reducing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and proposing tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

“It’s time for a government and an economy that represents all of us,” Sanders said.

The Thursday event with Mello, a Nebraska state senator who’s running as a Democrat in the mayoral race, is one of several rallies Sanders is holding across the country this week. It’s part of a Democratic National Committee-organized unity tour with DNC Chair Tom Perez.

The Omaha event wasn’t that notable – just one of several red state visits on the DNC itinerary — until Thursday morning. That’s when Ilyse Hogue, the president of abortion rights advocate NARAL Pro-Choice America, issued a statement blasting Sanders and Perez for spending time and resources campaigning alongside a Democrat who opposes abortion rights.

“The actions today by the DNC to embrace and support a candidate for office who will strip women – one of the most critical constituencies for the party – of our basic rights and freedom is not only disappointing, it is politically stupid,” Hogue said. “Today’s action makes this so-called ‘fight back tour’ look more like a throw-back tour for women and our rights.”

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Sanders pushed back against the criticism. “The truth is that in some conservative states there will be candidates that are popular candidates who may not agree with me on every issue. I understand it. That’s what politics is about,” Sanders told NPR.

In 2009, the version of Legislative Bill 675 that became law, on a 40-5 vote, was viewed as a compromise measure. As first introduced, the bill would have required a woman to look at the ultrasound image.

Mello’s campaign said he signed on to the bill to support the compromise version.

Mello, who is Catholic, said he remains pro-life.

“While my faith guides my personal views, as mayor I would never do anything to restrict access to reproductive health care,” Mello said in the statement.

A last-minute addition to the rally was Sofia Jawed-Wessel, an assistant professor of public health and health behavior at UNO, who spoke about her support of Planned Parenthood.

“Rally behind Heath Mello and support the candidate who supports Planned Parenthood,” she said.

Bernie is spot on about that, I don’t agree with Bernie 100% of the time either as its about agreeing on most positions than less. Even on this forum all of us don’t agree on everything and can and do respectfully disagree at times.

What’s funny is that we have to ‘accept’ corporatist, wall street/big pharma, anti legalization, anti healthcare for all, anti-free education, big coal loving Dem’s because… ‘big tent!’, but a Bernie-backed candidate has a view outside of the party mainstream and the guns are out. The very same party that puts Manchin in leadership.

Not sure I agree with Bernie. If the Dem candidate was against Medicare for All legislation, would he say the same? What if he wanted to lift all regulations on banks and corporations? Would he still support the Dem candidate?

Bernie’s Entrance, and then the a video of the crowd dispersing after Bernie spoke. I’ll use somebody elses Bernie speech video as mine is cut into a million pieces, but its avaialable on the youtube channel if you want to see clips.

I just love the raucousness of the crowd. So different from the rallies of the former Dem nominee. The only time I saw people raise their arms and cheer like during “her” rallies that was when a celebrity warmed up the crowd first.

Bernie’s voice sounds a little hoarse from the wear of the week, but his spirit is so high!

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will speak at a City Club of Cleveland program at 9 a.m. May 1 at the Global Center for Health Innovation in downtown Cleveland.

Sanders was a 2016 presidential candidate who won 23 state primaries and caucuses and became the first Jewish candidate to win a primary. His campaign was run on a platform to make college tuition debt free, creating a living wage, reducing the influence of Wall Street on politics and reducing income inequality. He later supported Hillary Clinton for president and his progressive policies continue to transform the Democratic Party’s policy positions

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Doors open for the event at 8 a.m. The event is sold out, however to be placed on a waiting list, call (216) 621-0082. It also will be live streamed at cityclub.org/live-stream starting at 9 a.m. May 1.

Bernie’s back. Or at least he will be. The details are still being hammered out, but it was confirmed this week that Sen. Bernie Sanders—everyone’s favorite shaker-upper of the Democratic establishment in 2016will return to Montana in May. And this time it won’t be his own campaign he’ll be stumping for, but that of U.S. House candidate Rob Quist.

“I’m excited that Bernie Sanders recognizes that our grassroots campaign is building momentum and has the best chance in decades to take back Montana’s U.S. House seat for the rest of us,” Quist said in a statement Monday. According to the Quist campaign, the Sanders schedule is still being finalized.

Though Quist’s campaign has gained steam in recent weeks, reporting more than $1.3 million in donations and pulling the trigger on its second statewide ad buy, the Sanders announcement is the first major nod from national Dems. Quist’s bid has attracted endorsements and contributions from national groups like the American Federation of Musicians, the AFL-CIO and Democracy for America, the PAC founded by former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean. Yet mainstream party organizations have kept themselves at arm’s length, even as outside conservative groups and, most recently, the National Republican Congressional Committee have pummeled Quist with attack ads.

It’s not entirely clear if Sanders’ willingness to campaign for Quist signals a change in the national Democrats’ hands-off approach to the race. The DNC’s April 10 press release announcing Montana as a spring stop for Sanders—part of his multi-state “Come Together and Fight Back Tour” alongside DNC chair Tom Perez—didn’t mention the May 25 special election at all. Instead, the stated purpose of the trip was “to begin the process of creating a Democratic Party which is strong and active in all 50 states.” Quist’s campaign confirms that any event or events it collaborates on with Sanders won’t be part of that DNC tour.

Well, if the DNC does not back Quist’s campaign with words and money, Bernie should call them out on it and go on with his tour without Perez. He seems to want them to grow a big umbrella by doing this tour, but is Perez just doing it for show on one hand and then on the other hand, it is DNC business as usual.

Published on Apr 20, 2017
The so-called progressives over at Slate spent the entire primary bashing Bernie Sanders. The fact that he’s now the most popular politician in the country must really grind their corporate neoliberal gears. Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

I never go to Slate page. I went there this morning and this article was not out front.

I don’t get the criticism here. It would be great if we had journalists asking the politicos serious/hard questions. We don’t-not in this FRightwingnut MSM Era. The Bernster is doing this podcast cos the corporate-captured media does not do its job keeping us voters informed. I am really getting fed up with all the bellyaching over Sanders. Wish we had 500 more like him in DC!! T and R to the usual suspects!! 🙂

LD: appreciate the report you brought back about the rally in your neck of the woods. I plan on taking part in the Orlando March For Science tomorrow on Earth Day. 🙂

Reminds me of that pie fest that’s been going on TOP. Bernie’s popularity has gotten under a lot of the skin of the Clintonistas, especially the Orange Satan himself, who admits the knives are out for Bernie. I’ll save that for a diary later this weekend.

Halfway through his second term, Mayor Rahm Emanuel will get a report card from progressives Saturday at a “State of the City” event launching Our Revolution Chicago, part of a national organization working to advance the agenda of Bernie Sanders’s remarkable 2016 presidential campaign.

Local activists including veteran organizer Katelyn Johnson, Tom Tresser of the TIF Illumination Project, and Tania Unzeuta of Mijente will give reports on Emanuel’s record on education, crime and policing, immigration, jobs and economic development, and taxes and city finances. The audience will decide what grade he gets in each area.

Among the participants will be Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a potential mayoral candidate once again; Cook County Clerk David Orr; state representatives LaShawn Ford and Theresa Mah; and aldermen John Arena, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and Sue Sadlowski-Garza.

With our federal, state and city governments dominated by unpopular politicians with vast campaign war chests – and an inability to address our most basic issues, like poorly funded education, lack of jobs, and violence – we could use an infusion of the energy harnessed by Sanders last year, with his focus on income inequality and campaign finance reform and his call for “political revolution.”

Instead of another fundraising operation, Our Revolution state coordinator Clem Balanoff wants to build a network of ward-based precinct organizations, something like the machine precinct captains he remembers from growing up on the Southeast Side.

Bernie Sanders is not a party man. He’s not even a Democrat. Despite having run for the Democratic nomination for president, he adamantly retains his status as an independent. Yet there’s no denying that Sanders continues to have an effect on the Democratic Party, and right now he and Tom Perez, the chair of the DNC, are traveling the country on a “unity tour” that seems to be displaying something less than perfect unity. So what effect is Sanders really having on the party?

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Sanders has every right to take what is essentially a semi-hostile stance toward the Democratic Party, one that says that those Democrats who meet his test of economic ideology are worthy and those who don’t should be dismissed with a wave of the hand. That’s what he thinks will produce the best substantive outcomes in the long run. He might be right.

But in the meantime, one might ask whether he’s bringing people into the Democratic Party or communicating to those who agree with him on issues that they should remain outside it, and only work to elect Democrats who win Bernie Sanders’ favor. One might argue on the other side that the most important thing for Democrats to do is fight Trump and the radicalism that has taken over the GOP. It’s hard to argue that supporting a Democrat for mayor who doesn’t believe in reproductive rights accomplishes that goal, but supporting a Democratic House candidate who hasn’t sufficiently demonstrated his antipathy to Goldman Sachs doesn’t.

But that’s Bernie’s thing — always has been, always will be. He’s never going to be a Democrat, because he has built his identity on being the guy who tells you that Democrats are a bunch of sellouts and only when the party remakes itself in his image will it succeed. You can agree with him on most issues or even every issue, but if you think the Democratic Party is the best available vehicle to accomplish progressive goals, you’re going to find yourself at odds with him.

Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions in bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) have effectively created a powerful and privileged system of protections for foreign investors that undermines national law and institutions.

ISDS allows foreign corporations to sue host governments for supposedly causing them losses due to policy or regulatory changes that reduce the expected profitability of their investments. Very significantly, ISDS provisions have been and can be invoked, even when rules are non-discriminatory, or profits come from causing public harm. ISDS will thus strengthen perverse incentives for foreign investors at the expense of local businesses and the public interest.

New Opportunity for Speculation

In recent years, ISDS provisions of investment treaties, free trade and other agreements have increasingly provided an investment opportunity to make money by speculating on lawsuits, winning huge awards and forcing foreign governments, and taxpayers, to pay. Financial speculators have increasingly purchased corporations deemed capable of profitably bringing winnable ISDS claims, sometimes using ‘shell companies’.

Some hedge funds and private equity firms even finance ISDS cases as third parties, with ISDS itself the raison d’etre for such investments. Such ‘third-party funding’ of ISDS claims has been expanding quickly as financing such claims has proven to be very lucrative.

Democrats are facing their first high-profile tests of whether the party can win back seats in Congress in the Trump era. But rather than unifying in opposition to the new administration, the political left is riven by division over what it means to be progressive.

The same debates that divided Democrats throughout the 2016 presidential primary—over how and when to prioritize economic populism and reproductive rights—threaten to make it more difficult for Democrats to rally around the very candidates who could help the party make inroads in conservative parts of the country. Controversy over those questions illustrates the challenge Democrats face as they decide which candidates to support, and what transgressions from liberal convictions to let slide, as the party tries to rebuild after being shut out of power in the White House and Congress.

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Why isn’t Sanders convinced Ossoff, a candidate backed by progressive organizations like MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and who raked in millions of dollars in part because he has captivated grassroots Democrats looking to send a message to Trump, is progressive?

Sanders allies argue that Ossoff has not elevated, or embraced, core economic issues that the senator champions, like reducing income equality. They also defended Sanders’ decision to campaign with Mello by stating that the senator is a champion of reproductive rights for women. (Sanders has received a 100% on Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s congressional scorecard.)

The current controversy is evidence that that ideological divides within the party continue to cause division even after the 2016 presidential election.
“I fully stand by Senator Sanders because he does champion women’s reproductive rights and he has never wavered there,” said Lucy Flores, a board member for Our Revolution, which has also endorsed Mello.

Flores added that while she personally would not support any candidate who does not fundamentally support a woman’s right to abortion “the fact that this one issue didn’t disqualify his support of Mello just speaks to the complexity of what it means to be a progressive champion during a time when many within the Democratic Party are still trying to figure out what that means.”

This Mello/Ossoff dispute has got to stop. Mello is an appropriate candidate for Omaha. Ossoff is an appropriate candidate for the Atlanta suburbs. Bernie can focus on which candidates he wants to. The candidates can welcome outside help from appropriate sources. Bernie probably isn’t the go to guy for the wealthy Atlanta suburbs. But I’m sure he appreciates Ossoff’s strong anti-corruption, anti-Citizens United stance.

I have a lot of words for what happened yesterday. But to make this short and I will post a diary later or tomorrow, then TOP had the temerity to withdraw an endorsement of Mello due to some developing news about his pro-life stance, that they didn’t even check out before the made the endorsement. Moreover, didn’t bother to reach out to Mello or Jane Kleeb, and it hit all of the news outlets, such as HuffPo, then WaPo, then NPR, and the Omaha newspaper. And because they didn’t investigate the specifics, they had to what Kos calls “adjust”, which means David Nir didn’t know what in the frack was the real issue at hand.

It’s possible this was organic, but there’s something fishy this sudden reversal of the endorsement, at a time Bernie being the most popular politician, a book that hits Clinton, and then this tour, in which Bernie stumped (not endorsed) for Dems in NE. Kos trashed the Berniecrats last week as we all know but pretends to be “progressive.” It’s true that they raised money for Quist, Thompson, and Ossoff, but at the same time, the disdain for Bernie is not veiled.

There is a diary on TOP that describes a little bit about the NE rally, but critical of what TOP did yesterday. It needs to stay on the Rec list all day to remind the smug folks over there how crappy this was. http://bit.ly/2pMn4Y0

But I don’t wish to rain on the great parts of this blog right now, when it’s clear that Bernie provided a great tonic to local Dems where he toured. LD, thank you for this blog and for some of the reporting. What I noticed was a great deal of energy, especially from the younger folks, who are needed right now to build a progressive agenda.

Bernie endorsed Ossoff this afternoon. It was not a big throated endorsement, but it was enough to say that we need more Dems in Congress.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) endorsed Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff on Friday after he took criticism for refusing to call the candidate in the high-profile House election “progressive.”

“Let me be very clear. It is imperative that Jon Ossoff be elected congressman from Georgia’s 6th District and that Democrats take back the U.S. House,” Sanders said in the statement released by his political office.

“I applaud the energy and grassroots activism in Jon’s campaign. His victory would be an important step forward in fighting back against Trump’s reactionary agenda.”

When the history of Donald Trump’s war with the US intelligence community is written, the name of the conflict’s first casualty is unlikely to be recorded, as the former marine officer is still a serving CIA official.

That marine officer was the CIA’s liaison to the White House, whose duties included bringing relevant White House officials with appropriate security clearance into the loop about covert operations.

According to current and former White House and intelligence officials, he lost a bureaucratic struggle with his nominal boss, the National Security Council’s controversial intelligence director.

Multiple former colleagues described the former CIA liaison as a consummate professional with no history of infractions. But late one afternoon in mid-March, the retired marine was abruptly informed that his services were no longer needed and he ought not to come to work the next day. Co-workers were shocked at a display that seemed designed to humiliate him.

“It was the most disrespectful thing they could have done,” said a White House official familiar with the incident. “He’s a good man. What happened to him was fucked up.”

The Trump administration in the United States has prepared criminal charges in order to arrest Julian Assange, founder and publisher of the media outlet WikiLeaks, CNN reported on Thursday.

Citing “U.S. officials familiar with the matter,” CNN reports the Justice Department “investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010″—which is around the time when WikiLeaks first gained international attention after it published thousands of leaked classified documents, including footage of military helicopter attack on civilians in Iraq. U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning was ultimately convicted for being the source of those leaks and is still serving a sentence in a U.S. military prison.

The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now a “priority” for the US, attorney general Jeff Sessions has said.

Hours later it was reported by CNN that authorities have prepared charges against Assange, who is currently holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Donald Trump lavished praise on the anti-secrecy website during the presidential election campaign – “I love WikiLeaks,” he once told a rally – but his administration has struck a different tone.

Asked whether it was a priority for the justice department to arrest Assange “once and for all”, Sessions told a press conference in El Paso, Texas on Thursday: “We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks. This is a matter that’s gone beyond anything I’m aware of. We have professionals that have been in the security business of the United States for many years that are shocked by the number of leaks and some of them are quite serious.”

He added: “So yes, it is a priority. We’ve already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail.”

After Hillary Clinton’s devastating loss nearly six months ago, her most powerful Democratic allies feared losing control of the party. Efforts to lip-synch economic populism while remaining closely tied to Wall Street had led to a catastrophic defeat. In the aftermath, the party’s progressive base—personified by Bernie Sanders—was in position to start flipping over the corporate game board.

Aligned with Clinton, the elites of the Democratic Party needed to change the subject. Clear assessments of the national ticket’s failures were hazardous to the status quo within the party. So were the groundswells of opposition to unfair economic privilege. So were the grassroots pressures for the party to become a genuine force for challenging big banks, Wall Street and overall corporate power.

In short, the Democratic Party’s anti-Bernie establishment needed to reframe the discourse in a hurry. And—in tandem with mass media—it did.

Thanks wi58! I still have to upload pictures, etc. Was pretty exhausted yesterday. Event didn’t end until 2pm, and had come into work at 2am to get some stuff done before I could head over there. Will try and splice together the videos into something cohesive as well as get the pictures and other stuff up later this afternoon.

Not since World War II have more human beings been at risk from disease and starvation than at this very moment. On March 10th, Stephen O’Brien, under secretary-general of the United Nations for humanitarian affairs, informed the Security Council that 20 million people in three African countries—Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan—as well as in Yemen were likely to die if not provided with emergency food and medical aid. “We are at a critical point in history,” he declared. “Already at the beginning of the year we are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the U.N.” Without coordinated international action, he added, “people will simply starve to death [or] suffer and die from disease.”

Major famines have, of course, occurred before, but never in memory on such a scale in four places simultaneously. According to O’Brien, 7.3 million people are at risk in Yemen, 5.1 million in the Lake Chad area of northeastern Nigeria, 5 million in South Sudan, and 2.9 million in Somalia. In each of these countries, some lethal combination of war, persistent drought, and political instability is causing drastic cuts in essential food and water supplies. Of those 20 million people at risk of death, an estimated 1.4 million are young children.

Despite the potential severity of the crisis, U.N. officials remain confident that many of those at risk can be saved if sufficient food and medical assistance is provided in time and the warring parties allow humanitarian aid workers to reach those in the greatest need. “We have strategic, coordinated, and prioritized plans in every country,” O’Brien said. “With sufficient and timely financial support, humanitarians can still help to prevent the worst-case scenario.”

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The international response? Essentially, a giant shrug of indifference.

N﻿ ot since World War II have more human beings been at risk from disease and starvation than at this very moment. On March 10, Stephen O’Brien, undersecretary general of the United Nations for humanitarian affairs, informed the Security Council that 20 million people in three African countries—Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan—as well as in Yemen were likely to die if not provided with emergency food and medical aid. “We are at a critical point in history,” he declared. “Already at the beginning of the year we are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the UN.” Without coordinated international action, he added, “people will simply starve to death [or] suffer and die from disease.”

﻿ Major famines have, of course, occurred before, but never in memory on such a scale in four places simultaneously. According to O’Brien, 7.3 million people are at risk in Yemen, 5.1 million in the Lake Chad area of northeastern Nigeria, 5 million in South Sudan, and 2.9 million in Somalia. In each of these countries, some lethal combination of war, persistent drought, and political instability is causing drastic cuts in essential food and water supplies. Of those 20 million people at risk of death, an estimated 1.4 million are young children.

On Saturday, people around the world will mark Earth Day with a March for Science to protest the Trump administration’s crackdown on climate action and medical research.

The marches come as President Donald Trump proposes slashing $5.8 billion in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pay for the U.S.-Mexico border wall and pulling the U.S. from the landmark Paris climate accord that aims to keep global warming below 2°C. These prospects not only threaten scientific and medical advancements, researchers warn, they are also an attack on democracy.

As Karen Antman, Harris Berman, George Q. Daley, and Terence R. Flotte—the deans of Boston University School of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and University of Massachusetts Medical School, respectively—wrote for the Boston Globe on Thursday:

The NIH funding cuts would set in motion the unraveling of the biomedical enterprise by cutting off vital research dollars from critical research. The human toll of doing so would reverberate long into the future.

These cuts would effectively wipe out a generation of brilliant young scientists just starting their careers in academia, while dissuading others from entering the field altogether.

Despite the lack of information from the Pentagon about President Donald Trump’s deployment on April 13 of the “Mother of All Bombs” in Afghanistan—or its aftermath—close to 70 percent of American voters say they “strongly” or “somewhat” support the bombing, according to a new poll.

Defense Secretary James Mattis said Thursday that “he does not intend to discuss damage estimates from last week’s use of the military’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb on an Islamic State stronghold in Afghanistan,” the Associated Press reported.

An Afghan official said this week that the bombing killed 96 Islamic State [ISIS] militants, though “the official provided no proof of the deaths or information on how officials reached the number of 96,” as the New York Times notes. There have been no confirmed reports of civilian casualties.

The Times further reported on Tuesday:

It was unclear whether any Afghan or coalition forces have made it to the bombing site five days after the attack. The senior Afghan security official said the day after the bombing that Afghan commandos had done so and, after clearing the site, had handed it over to American military forensic teams.

[Zabihullah] Zmarai, the provincial council member, said local officials in Achin told him that neither Afghan nor American forces had arrived at the site.

A spokesman for the Afghan commandos, Jawid Salim, agreed. “It is not true that the members of U.S. forensic are at the scene of bombing—no one is there,” he said. “We are in the area and we see everything.”

i’m still wondering what the goal was of dropping this? Thought this bomb was meant for a larger military target to destroy military bases and the like. The cruse missiles were a waste as well since Syria was warned they were coming. 70% you say I was hopping that Americans were getting sick of war. Don’t get me wrong we need to defend ourselves but it seems the politicians look for the smallest reason to project our military anywhere on the planet.

Democrats are increasingly bullish on their chances in Montana’s May 25 special election, in which country-folk singer Rob Quist is competing for the state’s sole seat in the House of Representatives. One problem: In a January interview, Quist floated the idea of legislation to create a registry for automatic weapons.

Politically, it didn’t matter that he left handguns and rifles out of the idea, or that some heavy weapons already must be registered. Republicans, always looking for a kill shot, began portraying Quist as a gun grabber. An ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee threw images of hunting rifles on-screen and said Quist would create a “gun registry,” leaving the impression that he’d take away every gun he could.

Quist’s response comes in the surprisingly robust tradition of ads that feature candidates shooting guns. In “Defend,” Quist sets up a shot at a TV screen that’s playing the ad in question.

“For generations, this old rifle has protected my family’s ranch,” said Quist. “I won’t stand by while a millionaire from New Jersey tries to attack my Montana values.”

Dow Chemical, whose CEO Andrew Liveris is a close adviser to President Donald Trump, is pressuring the administration to throw out a government risk study on several popular pesticides, the Associated Press reported.

The 10,000-page study found that the three pesticides under review—chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion—pose a risk to roughly 1,800 animals and plants protected under the Endangered Species Act. The evaluations were compiled by federal scientists over the last four years and were expected to result in new limits on how and where the highly toxic pesticides can be used.

But lawyers representing Dow and two other makers of the organophosphates sent letters to the heads of three cabinet agencies last week, asking that the study be “set aside” and saying that the results are flawed.

“Our government’s own scientists have already documented the grave danger these chemicals pose to people and endangered species,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Unable to win on the facts, Dow is now adopting the same disgraceful tactics honed by the tobacco industry and the climate deniers to try to discredit science and scrap reasonable conservation measures that will protect our most endangered animals and plants

Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas-based pipeline operator that owns the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, is coming under renewed scrutiny for two spills that released more than 2 million gallons of drilling fluid into Ohio wetlands earlier this month.

A violation notice made public this week indicates about 50,000 gallons of drilling fluid — a thick gel-like substance used to cut through rock during pipeline construction — was released near Richland County, Ohio. The spill was discovered April 14, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. An estimated 2 million gallons spilled in another incident discovered April 13 near the Tuscarawas River south of Navarre. Both spills were connected to the company’s construction of the Rover Pipeline, a $4.2 billion dollar project that will route through Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan and Ontario, Canada.

Energy Transfer Partners said the Richland County leak has been completely cleaned up.

“We are currently working to complete the cleanup at the other site in Stark County and anticipate returning to construction shortly,” Alexis Daniel, a spokesperson for Energy Transfer Partners, told NewsHour.

Daniel said the leak was “not harmful to the environment,” but an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency filing notes the spills “impacted water quality.” Both spills contain “bentonite,” a mineral used to help cat litter clump when it gets wet and does not break down easily in water, making it difficult to remove large clumps from aquifers.

A week ago, an estimated 1.5 million gallons of a fluid used in drilling the underground pathway for the Rover gas pipeline spilled in southwestern Stark County. The accident was in an area where Canton has shallow wells for its water supply.

According to the Ohio EPA the spill in Bethlehem Township was contained in a ten acre, low-lying wetland and did not pose an immediate public health risk. Tyler Converse who heads the Canton Water Department says the incident was a concern and was checked out. “It was northeast, well northeast, of Canton’s water aquifer down at the Sugarcreek water plant, between Bolivar and Beach City. We were looking at it, but it doesn’t appear that it will impact Canton’s drinking water aquifer.”

The Sugarcreek aquifer is one of three used by Canton and is the water source for about 50-thousand people.

Key words ” but it doesn’t appear that it will impact Canton’s drinking water aquifer.” If I were the citizens in that area I would ask for continued checking, That Contaminated water will seep into the ground and follow thru gravity until its hits an area where it can no longer go. Who knows if theirs small fissures or cracks for it to seep into their aquifer?

As Highway 119 cleaves through the mountains of eastern Kentucky, exposed bands of black gold stretch on for miles – come get us if you can, they tease. And for years, miners did: they had good employment that earned them upwards of $70,000 a year and built a legacy of blue-collar pride in the region. “We felt like what we did was important,” says Rusty Justice, a self-described entrepreneur who hauled his first truck of coal in 8th grade. And it was. In 2004, coal powered half of America’s electrical needs.

But by 2011, Justice and his business partner, Lynn Parish, who worked in coal for 40 years, began to worry. Natural gas was enjoying an uptick that would later turn into a surge thanks to new fracking technologies, and the men could see “Obama wasn’t going to be kind” to them. So the two coal men from Pikeville began thinking about how they could diversify.

Don’t get them wrong: coal in Kentucky is still very much king. But it is king the same way Queen Elizabeth is the monarch of the UK: a house of power to be revered, but no longer counted on for daily providence. For that, coal country must transform itself into something else, a new place on the map the hopeful call “Silicon Holler”.

The Slims River in Northern Canada gained infamy, not for its fishing or pristine waters, but for vanishing in a matter of four days in May 2016. This week we learned that it fell victim to ‘river piracy’ – and climate change was almost certainly to blame.

The river — which stretched up to 150 meters at its widest points and averaged depths around 3 meters — lost its water source to another nearby river during a period of intense melting affecting one of Canada’s largest glaciers. As a result, the Slims was reduced to a trickle in less than a week.

We can now add river piracy to the growing list of unexpected, dramatic and tragic consequences of human-caused climate change. Although this is the first observed case of river piracy, it likely won’t be the last.

The melting of Yukon’s massive Kaskawulsh Glacier — known to the local Southern Tutchone First Nation as Tänshı̨̄ — caused the drainage gradient to tip in favour of the second river, redirecting the meltwater to the Gulf of Alaska, thousands of miles from its original destination.

The science says there’s a 99.5% chance that climate change caused this dramatic transformation of the landscape. The continuing warming trend that caused the glacier to thin so extremely means the change is likely irreversible.

The federal government says the systems put in place by the State of Illinois to prevent potentially catastrophic damage to pipelines is “inadequate”, because of lax enforcement by the city of Chicago.

The program is most familiar to the general public through signs warning to “Call JULIE Before You Dig”. Those calls go to a central phone bank near Joliet, where operators notify various utilities like gas and electric companies of the need to mark their lines in specific areas where construction work is about to begin

Chicago doesn’t take part in “JULIE”, opting to operate its own program called “DIGGER”. But unlike the state program, which has the full enforcement muscle of the Illinois Commerce Commission behind it, the United States Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) says it found the city has no enforcement system in place, to either compel companies to call before they dig, or levy punishment for those who rupture lines.

“This presents a significant gap in pipeline safety,” the agency warned, in a letter to the I.C.C., where they also noted that with that finding they now have the power to levy fines against violators as high as $205,638 per day.

Sunoco’s Mariner East 1 natural gas liquids pipeline leaked about 20 barrels of ethane and propane near Morgantown, Berks County, on April 1, the company said on Thursday.

The leak, at 5530 Morgantown Road, Morgantown, Pa., did not reach water sources, according to the US Coastguard’s National Response Center, which records spills of hazardous materials such as oil and chemicals.

Jeff Shields, a spokesman for Sunoco, confirmed that about 20 barrels of the liquids leaked from the line. After being notified of a possible leak on April 1, company officials confirmed the release, shut down the line and made the repair over the next few days, Shields said.

He said there were no public safety impacts and that the cause is being investigated in cooperation with regulators.

All three Democrats on the Senate’s Nominations Committee voted against the move; four Republicans voted in favor. A full Senate vote with a two-thirds majority is now needed to approve Warren’s appointment.

Gov. Greg Abbott appointed the billionaire CEO to the sought-after post 18 months ago. Warren has since been the subject of regular activism at the parks department, at his offices and at his home.

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More than 5,000 Texans have contacted their state Senator to oppose Warren’s nomination, the Sierra Club said.

“It’s disappointing that the majority on the committee would support a nominee with such inherent conflicts, but not surprising given the stranglehold the oil and gas industry has on the Texas Legislature,” said Cyrus Reed, Conservation Director of the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter.

Financial disclosures filed on Tuesday reveal that corporate chiefs, including those with pending business before then-incoming President Trump, provided much of the financing for the festivities around his inauguration.

Complying with federal law, the Trump Inaugural Committee disclosed its donors to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday, showing total contributions of more than $106 million — a new record.

Included in the roster of funders is pipeline builder Kelcy Warren, who contributed a quarter-million dollars to the event. Warren’s company, Energy Transfer, is behind construction of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline.

In an interview with The Dallas News in January, Warren described 2016 as the “toughest year of my life,” referring to protests that rocked the company over the construction of DAPL. He said that Trump’s election gave him hope.

Loopholes and weaknesses in President Donald Trump’s much-touted “Buy American, Hire American” executive order signed Tuesday abound, critics note, and the order is only looking more flimsy at it meets push-back not just from progressives but also from the companies the order is purportedly intended to boost: manufacturing firms.

Most notably, the directive to use solely U.S. steel to construct oil and gas pipelines—an oft-repeated Trump promise—is meeting strong push-back from Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the company behind the infamous Dakota Access Pipeline.

“The impacts of such a restriction are expected to severely delay project schedules, drive up costs, decrease availability, and lower quality,” the company complained to the Commerce Department this month, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Trump previously also vowed that Keystone XL, the other controversial pipeline project that Trump revived after his election, would be made of American steel. But Keystone XL maker TransCanada subsequently threatened to sue the U.S. under NAFTA if it was forced to use only U.S. steel, and the Trump administration swiftly relented and granted it permission to use foreign-made metals.

The rejection of Trump’s order from ETP is particularly noteworthy given the close ties between ETP’s CEO, Kelcy Warren, and Trump.

Schiff’s near-constant presence on TV is valuable in a state with 53 members of Congress who compete for attention with movie stars. And it’s practically a requirement for achieving name recognition in a state with eight major media markets that make it nearly impossible to reach voters through commercials.

His fast-rising profile is fueling speculation he might be laying the groundwork for a run for higher office — for the Senate or governor’s mansion, or maybe even the White House.

Schiff himself acknowledges harboring grander ambitions but adds the obligatory qualifiers in an interview: He’s busy with his current job and hopes that Dianne Feinstein, California’s 83-year-old senator, will seek reelection in 2018.

Statewide office is “certainly something I’ve thought about in the past and may think about in the future, but I have a pretty full plate as it is,” Schiff said.

Schiff allies like Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, another Democrat on the Intelligence panel, said Schiff has been given a major platform with the Russia investigation — and is capitalizing on it “beautifully.”

The Republican National Committee raised $12 million in March and a total of $41.5 million in the first quarter, the committee announced Friday.

The first quarter total is a record for fundraising after a presidential election, the committee said, adding that the total was bolstered by nearly $20 million in incoming funds in January.

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The totals leave the RNC with $41.4 million cash on hand and no debt. At the end of February, the most recently available data for the Democratic National Committee, the Democrats had just under $10.8 million on hand and $2.8 million in debt.

Former President Barack Obama will make his first public appearance Monday, hosting an event on civic engagement back on his old stomping grounds at the University of Chicago.

The event, open to the public but with limited tickets, will bring together younger leaders and students “for a conversation on community organizing and civic engagement.”

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“This event is part of President Obama’s post-presidency goal to encourage and support the next generation of leaders driven by strengthening communities around the country and the world,” the event program states.

The focus on younger leaders will be a significant part of his post-presidency, much of which is still being formulated. According to people familiar, he’ll talk about how people like those who are part of the event inspired him to get into politics in the first place, back when he was a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago.

President Donald Trump’s lawyers argued in a Thursday court filing that protesters “have no right” to “express dissenting views” at his campaign rallies because such protests infringed on his First Amendment rights.

The filing comes in a case brought by three protesters who allege they were roughed up and ejected from a March 2016 Trump campaign rally in Louisville, Kentucky, by Trump supporters who were incited by the then-candidate’s calls from the stage to “get ’em out of here!”

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Lawyers for Trump’s campaign have argued that his calls to remove the protesters were protected by the First Amendment. But the federal district court judge hearing the case issued a ruling late last month questioning that argument, as well as the claim that Trump didn’t intend for his supporters to use force.

The ruling cleared the case to proceed into discovery and towards a trial.

As President Donald Trump’s second travel ban works its way through the courts, Attorney General Jeff Sessions dismissed the Hawaii judge who ruled against it as a “judge sitting on an island in the Pacific.”

“I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” Sessions told radio host Mark Levin on Wednesday, as reported by CNN.

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Sessions’ remark, as well as his description of Hawaii, the 50th state to join the union, prompted quick pushback on social media on Thursday.

Matthew Miller, a former Department of Justice spokesperson in the Obama administration, called the comment “an extraordinary attack on a federal judge’s right to do his job by a sitting AG.”

A new book by economist Peter Temin finds that the U.S. is no longer one country, but dividing into two separate economic and political worlds.

You’ve probably heard the news that the celebrated post-WW II beating heart of America known as the middle class has gone from “burdened,” to “squeezed” to “dying.” But you might have heard less about what exactly is emerging in its place.

In a new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT, draws a portrait of the new reality in a way that is frighteningly, indelibly clear: America is not one country anymore. It is becoming two, each with vastly different resources, expectations, and fates.

Two roads diverged

In one of these countries live members of what Temin calls the “FTE sector” (named for finance, technology, and electronics, the industries which largely support its growth). These are the 20 percent of Americans who enjoy college educations, have good jobs, and sleep soundly knowing that they have not only enough money to meet life’s challenges, but also social networks to bolster their success. …

The FTE citizens rarely visit the country where the other 80 percent of Americans live: the low-wage sector. Here, the world of possibility is shrinking, often dramatically. People are burdened with debt and anxious about their insecure jobs if they have a job at all. Many of them are getting sicker and dying younger than they used to. They get around by crumbling public transport and cars they have trouble paying for. Family life is uncertain here….
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Not sure if Buzzfeed is a respected source, but this looks like a great series and resource–it’s often hard to talk about ISDS–sort of abstract to many of us.

Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will.
Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution. Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.

Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court’s authority because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves as “The Club” or “The Mafia.”

And imagine that the penalties this court has imposed have been so crushing — and its decisions so unpredictable — that some nations dare not risk a trial, responding to the mere threat of a lawsuit by offering vast concessions, such as rolling back their own laws or even wiping away the punishments of convicted criminals.

This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify.

These trade pacts have become a flashpoint in the US presidential campaign. But an 18-month BuzzFeed News investigation, spanning three continents and involving more than 200 interviews and tens of thousands of documents, many of them previously confidential, has exposed an obscure but immensely consequential feature of these trade treaties, the secret operations of these tribunals, and the ways that business has co-opted them to bring sovereign nations to heel.
The BuzzFeed News investigation explores four different aspects of ISDS. In coming days, it will show how the mere threat of an ISDS case can intimidate a nation into gutting its own laws, how some financial firms have transformed what was intended to be a system of justice into an engine of profit, and how America is surprisingly vulnerable to suits from foreign companies.

The series starts today with perhaps the least known and most jarring revelation: Companies and executives accused or even convicted of crimes have escaped punishment by turning to this special forum. …